Meet One of the Sensory Scientists Guiding Highlight Customers to Product Success

Get to know our team of research professionals better! You already know Director of Research Lauren Rappaport. This spring, Highlight was delighted to welcome Senior Research Manager Alex Maxwell to the team, too. Alex is a sensory scientist with years of experience at companies like Anheuser-Busch, Nestlé Purina and more.

Now as a member of the Highlight Customer Enablement team, Alex is using his sensory powers to help our customers build products people love.

With Alex officially on the team, we couldn’t help but wonder: what brought him to sensory science?

Chelsea Stone, Senior Manager of Digital & Content Marketing: Why don’t we start from the beginning. How did you know that sensory science was your calling?

Alex Maxwell, Senior Research Manager: I grew up in rural America, doing 4-H and FFA [The National FFA Organization, a.k.a. Future Farmers of America]. That's where I learned how to navigate my way through a kitchen. 

It's funny to me that “farm-to-table” became such a big trend when that's just how I grew up–we had a garden, we canned tomatoes; it was a lot of hard work. 

“It was really important to my parents that my sister and I understand that food doesn't just appear out of nowhere, and that there's a lot of hard work involved.”

It was really important to my parents that my sister and I understand that food doesn't just appear out of nowhere, and that there's a lot of hard work involved. We learned that when it's time to take care of the cucumbers, you have to do it. Otherwise they rot. It's not like a grocery store where they're all fresh all the time. When you have 50 pounds of cucumbers, you have to process them. You can make pickles. You can make relishes. You can transform them into something that you can put in jars and put in cans.

I have so many memories of my family and I cranking out different things in the kitchen all summer long. In the fall, we knew that we were going to make applesauce. We knew how good it tasted to have fresh apples that we cooked on the stove, pureed and then put into jars.

Alex with some of the family pets

We raised beef cattle as well. My sister and I showed cattle. And every year we’d process one for eating. To this day, I still get fresh beef from my parents. 

So growing up, we had a very good connection to our food. It was a priority for our family to have farm-raised fresh beef and really good, homegrown canned produce. That has translated to my everyday. I can’t imagine a world without my garden.

When I got to high school, I attended a 4-H summer camp at Kansas State on bakery science that became my first venture into the realm of food science. It was the first moment I thought, “I think this is what I want to do.”

I've always loved the whole science piece. When you're growing up in rural America, there's really only three careers to choose from, and this path was very different. It combined my love of the land with science in a way that stretched me and challenged me. And so that's how I got into food science.

A young Alex cutting his teeth at K State food science summer camp

Chelsea: How would you define “food science”?

Alex: Food science is an umbrella term for the scientific discipline that includes chemistry, physics, and engineering as they apply to food. In college I actually started as pre-med because it was an easy way to get all of those science credits, but I had a bit more fun than the Biology majors. For example I took Organic Chemistry, but then I also took Flavor Chemistry, which is basically applied Organic Chemistry, and I developed a deeper knowledge of how everything works thanks to that.

Chelsea: Have you ever encountered any misconceptions about sensory science specifically?

Alex: Sometimes it feels like [sensory scientists] are the redheaded stepchildren of food science, because you have your engineers, your physicists, and your chemists–all “ancient” sciences–but sensory science was only developed in the 1950s because of the Space Race and trying to find a way to feed astronauts! NASA had to create food that could enable people to survive in space, but it also had to taste good. They experimented with removing all the moisture from a food, rehydrating it, and studying the changes–this was early sensory science. 

“The sensory science field is full of people who really care about making good products.”

Since then it has evolved completely, and the sensory science field is full of people who really care about making good products. Even though it started with measuring basic taste and understanding how the nose and tongue function, 70 years later, sensory science is being applied to literally anything. You can apply sensory science to goods, services, even sectors like auto. It's a very flexible discipline that has advanced so far and even informed market research.

Chelsea: How should product developers use sensory science and market research together?

Alex: Sensory science is first and foremost a science. There’s a rigor to it. We have to obey science. On the other hand, market research is heavily legal (take claims substantiation, for example). Both disciplines use checks and balances, but we’re governed by different systems. 

In sensory science, for example, we ask questions like, “Can we make it fatty?” and then we look at the science of thresholds that enable a food to trigger a dopamine receptor. There’s a lot of power in this, and sensory scientists have as much responsibility as they do opportunity to meet evolving consumer preferences.

For example, a sensory scientist might know how to max out the fat content to hit that dopamine receptor and elicit a response, but we also know that consumers are looking for more heart-healthy options with lower sugar content, and it’s our job to create something that meets these standards. 

“I love working on nutritionally-backed products because it has consistently been at the forefront of innovation.”

I love working on nutritionally-backed products because it has consistently been at the forefront of innovation. For example, when I was working on yogurt, consumers were looking for higher protein content–but protein doesn't taste good. So for us, the challenge became: how do we make protein palatable for a consumer so that they are getting the functional benefit of protein, but they also actually want to consume it–all while not dumping a ton of sugar into the product and defeating the whole purpose of making a “better-for-you” product. 

Working in the realms of high intensity non-caloric sweeteners is a hot spot right now, too. Sensory scientists are playing with the impacts of using one over the other, using a blend of different kinds–but it’s very challenging because it seems like every day, consumer preferences shift for or against one non-caloric sweetener or another, like the trend against artificial sweeteners.

Chelsea: Kind of like the trend against seed oils.

Alex: Yes, and then you can see these consumer trends or influencers saying that seed oils are bad, but beef tallow is great–or whatever it is that day. That's where we have a duty as scientists to say to consumers that aspartame could be a carcinogen, but as a human, you would have to eat a hundred pounds of it a day.

Chelsea: How do you build better products for people if you, as a scientist, understand nutritional principles, but the trends driving consumer preferences are demanding something that’s not necessarily validated by science?

Alex: It’s really a defining challenge of our time.

Chelsea: That must be very frustrating for food scientists.

Alex: It is, but it also presents a very interesting, unique challenge. When I was a product developer, the most fun I had at work was developing products for a certain consumer set. 

There are two camps of people. You have consumers who are looking for better options, and then you have a consumer set like bodybuilders who want, for example, a donut that has 20 grams of protein, but the macronutrients have to balance, and they don't want any sugar. And then it’s your job as an R&D scientist to deliver. 

This kind of consumer has a taste tolerance for things that I or the average consumer absolutely do not have a tolerance for. But these consumer groups and so many others in the health and wellness space are fun groups to develop products for. They prove that there’s room for niche products. There are tons of gaps to fill to deliver products that fit different lifestyles, and that’s why we have a growing diversity of options on shelf. 

Chelsea: I’m glad there’s a market for protein donuts, but I couldn’t help but wonder…have you ever had to save the world from a bad product? 

Alex: Oh absolutely. When I worked in Bevalc, a motto of mine was, “I had to taste this so you didn’t have to.” That's the whole point of R&D–you want to get it right, but you also have to learn why something didn’t work. That way you don’t do it again. It’s like a game of Red Light, Green Light where you are gauging whether something is “too much” or “not enough.” 

Alex saving the world from a gluten-free bread made with sorghum

For example, if you want to make a strawberry daiquiri drink, you want to achieve a cooked strawberry flavor over a fresh flavor, but you don’t want it to taste like strawberry flavored chapstick. And you don’t want a creamy strawberry flavor that belongs in the bakery section. You need to understand that “strawberry” could mean a thousand different flavors, and you need to figure out what flavor fits the occasion. Tasting 23 different iterations of strawberry is just part of the job.

With prototyping in R&D, the goal is to eventually narrow down your options to one or two that feel close, and then use a platform like Highlight to make the final decision. Once R&D has done everything that they can, you need consumer feedback. Science can’t substitute for consumer knowledge and feedback.

“Science can’t substitute for consumer knowledge and feedback.”

Chelsea: Okay last section. When Lauren first joined the Highlight research team, we talked coffee. Now that it’s your turn, let’s talk cocktails. What do you love about them?

Alex: The artistry, the taste, and the flavors. It's such a world unto itself. You could have a lifelong hobby of exploring new cocktails and always be discovering new things. 

My background as a food scientist and sensory scientist makes me think of cocktail ingredients like levers that you can push up and down to change the overall experience of a drink. For example, I'm really tolerant of tart drinks, but I still want balance with some sweetness and flavor of the base spirit. Knowing what these ingredients do or my dilution preference, I can better talk with a product developer or a bartender and provide direction to optimize a sensory profile of a cocktail. 

One of the things I love about shaken cocktails are the ice chips that float on the top from the shaking process that gives a little crunch to the cocktail and I think of it as a little treat–I don’t always need a double strained cocktail for that standard smooth cocktail experience.

“I think of cocktail ingredients like levers that you can push up and down to change the overall experience of a drink.”

Chelsea: What are your favorite cocktails, especially for the season we're in right now? 

Alex: I think gin is the perfect year round spirit base because it is so versatile, but it also has a flavor to it. I love the botanicals, and depending on what style of gin you get, you can ramp up the botanical notes or floral notes, or you can stick with a more classic juniper flavor. I even recently tried a cocktail with a nori-infused gin that was so surprising and brought some savory, umami flavors that made my tastebuds work overtime. 

I love how diverse gin can be, but it’s still a blank canvas. Maybe not to the extent that vodka is–gin is like a blank canvas with primer on. 

Chelsea: You’re the scientist so tell me–is there a scientific reason why juniper or the other botanicals in gin are enhanced by the presence of lime?

Alex: There’s so much flavor background to it! The chemical compounds found in juniper are also found in citrus oils. So the profiles already go together.

Chelsea: Today I learned–cheers!

Alex Maxwell is a food scientist currently living in St. Louis, Missouri. You can find him supporting Highlight’s customers in their research to build better products, tending to his vegetable garden, or sipping a shaken daiquiri at Kenny’s (IYKYK).